Permian Basin oil and gas operators and service companies reeling from sub-$50 oil prices got a dose of good news and bad news Thursday at the Permian Basin Petroleum Association’s annual meeting.

The bad news: There’s more financial pain to come.

The good news: The pain is almost over.

“A lot of the healing has already begun,” said luncheon keynote speaker Colin Fenton, managing partner at Blacklight Research LLC.

He said companies have cut costs and made all the other adjustments needed in the face of low oil prices.

“The last thing is the pain of cutting good people, and that is the most searing, difficult thing,” he said.

“Once the pain stops, probably in July 2016, people will be surprised to see the stock market down but oil and gas up,” he said.

He compared the current downturn to the 1986 collapse when Saudi Arabia abruptly shifted its stance from high oil prices to maintaining market share. That scenario is already in place but this time the pain will be felt by Russia, Brazil, Norway and offshore United Kingdom, he said.

“The beneficiaries will be Texas, Oklahoma and Canada. They may be higher-cost producers, but they’re upper-middle cost producers. The real high-cost producers are offshore,” Fenton said.

He estimated prices will average $65 over the next 15 years, occasionally rising to $90 or above.

Fenton advised his audience to abandon the “lower for longer” mantra that recently has taken hold, saying the ascension of risk is more apt.

Global issues have influenced pricing, and he pointed to China, where the manufacturing sector is in contraction. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest oil importer and the timing and scale of its imports are price-sensitive, he said.

Geopolitics is marching toward a flashpoint, he said, and cited civil war in Syria -- where Russia has recently launched bombing runs -- unrest in Libya and battles against Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.

“How many regional wars does it take to count as a world war?” he said.

If a flashpoint happens, it will impact energy prices, Fenton said.

Low prices already have fixed demand softness. Growth is the strongest in the industry’s history and is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, he said.

“Our civilization is not only not going to get off oil and gas; it’s going to need 13 million barrels more a day just to get to 2030,” he said.

He praised Permian Basin producers for their skill in using technology to lift production levels. But he said producers will be challenged because they will need to find an additional 341,000 barrels per day just to offset the decline rate in legacy wells.

He derided the G7’s vow in June to “wean human civilization off hydrocarbons by 2100,” saying the statement contained no specific ways of doing so.

“At the end of the day, the world needs oil and gas” and it needs Permian Basin oil and gas, he said.

The industry faces more pain from low prices, but when the recovery begins, “this part of the world will be in the sweet spot,” Fenton said.